Duplicate Slide Masters in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac

Learn how to duplicate Slide Masters in PowerPoint 2011 for Mac.

Author: Geetesh Bajaj

Product/Version: Microsoft PowerPoint 2011OS: Mac OS X

Date Created: June 21, 2013Last Updated: June 21, 2013

Duplicating a Slide Master is different from
adding a new Slide
Master. And it's a time saving option because you don't have to make the same changes all over again
-- let's explain this with a scenario. Imagine you have formatted your existing Slide Master by applying a
Background
Style,
adding a logo, or even adding your own
Picture placeholder layout. And now you want a new Slide Master that's almost the same as your
existing one -- but you want a different
Theme Colors
set to be used. For such a small change, it is advisable that you duplicate your existing Slide Master and
then make any more changes instead of starting all over again with a new Slide Master.

Follow these steps to learn how you can duplicate your existing Slide Master:

Launch PowerPoint and open your presentation. Next, select the View |
Master | Slide Master menu option -- this opens the
Slide Master view,
as shown in Figure 1. Here, within the pane on the left, you'll find the existing
Slide Master with associated layouts and some formatting done (highlighted in red within
Figure 1).

Figure 1: Slide Master in a PowerPoint Presentation

To duplicate the Slide Master select it and choose the Edit |
Duplicate menu option, as shown in Figure 2.

This will create a duplicate of your existing Slide Master, as shown highlighted in
red within Figure 3. Notice that this duplicated Slide Master is just like your
existing Slide Master -- if you had
added new Slide Layouts to the original Slide Master, you will see those new Slide Layouts within
the duplicated Slide Master as well.

Figure 3: Duplicated Slide Master

Tip: PowerPoint will just prefix a number before the name of the
duplicated Slide Master. Ideally, you should provide a sensible name to your new Slide Master. We explain
how you can rename the Slide Master in our
Add and Rename Slide Masters in PowerPoint 2011 tutorial.

Now, you can make the requisite changes to the duplicated Slide Master.

When done, click the Close Master button (highlighted in blue within
Figure 3 above) within the
Slide Area.
This will get you back to
Normal view.